Social media key to outcome in 160 Lok Sabha seats: Study

The study 'Social Media and Lok Sabha Elections', jointly conducted by the RIS Knowledge Foundation and supported by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) said that "there are 160 high impact constituencies out of the total of 543 constituencies, which were likely to be influenced by social media during the next general election."

High impact constituencies are those where the numbers of Facebook users are more than the margin of victory of the winner in the last election, or where Facebook users account for over 10 percent of the voters.

The study found that there were 67 constituencies which have been identified as medium impact constituencies, while the rest were classified as low impact constituencies or no impact constituencies.

The corresponding numbers are 60 out of 543 in the low impact category and the remaining 256 out of 543 as being in the no ompact category.

Maharashtra has the most number of high impact constituencies (21), followed by Gujarat (17), the study said.